Global securities lending revenue reached US$1.9 billion in August 2026, up 25% year-on-year. APAC led equity lending, with lender-to-broker revenue up 116% to US$588 million. Meanwhile, fixed income grew 27% to US$292 million on rising government debt balances. As volumes and complexity rise together, we believe advantage is shifting to firms that have moved beyond connectivity to intelligence. Today, AI can surface issues and suggest fixes before a desk would even know to look, and that is driving a qualitative leap in securities finance.

This edition traces that shift through each contributor's own lens. Ben Challice explains why scale and connectivity are now essential and how Pirum is moving beyond connectivity to intelligence. Ray Wong, six weeks into Pirum and fresh from building AI elsewhere, explains why, at Pirum, the infrastructure and platform are already in place. Zoë Balkwell argues that, as record volumes stretch manual oversight further, the real value of pre-trade AI is surfacing opportunities a desk would never have spotted on its own. And Renato Lima takes on the in-house build case directly, arguing that a coding agent can write a matching engine in a weekend but cannot replicate 25 years of counterparty trust and deep subject matter expertise.

  1. Vision 2030: Beyond connectivity – Ben Challice, CEO
  2. Why there has never been a better time for Pirum to launch AI – Ray Wong, Director of Product – AI and Data
  3. Pre-trade intelligence: Finding liquidity before the desk even looks – Zoë Balkwell, Global Head of Pre-Trade and Trading
  4. The build trap: Why in-house AI starts at near zero – Renato Lima, Chief Commercial Officer

 

 

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